Orkney Twilight

by Clare Carson

  ‘But they didn’t find the information in the car?’

  ‘Jim didn’t have the envelope with him.’

  Harry checked her out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘I had it,’ she said. She tried to grin in a dippy sort of way.

  Harry stroked his chin. ‘So it was Chance that ordered the hit on Jim.’

  She hesitated; relieved that Harry hadn’t asked about her own involvement, how she had ended up with the package. And in the gap in the conversation she heard the strange sounds of the tunnel – the rushing river overhead, ghosts of the past whispering, and somewhere far away a drip, drip, drip of water, like the ticking of a clock.

  Eventually she spoke. ‘The Commander ordered the hit on Jim.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘No. Now I think you’ve lost the trail. Jim had his suspicions about the Commander. He was worried that he was setting him up. But he was wrong about that.’

  ‘Why did Jim suspect him?’

  ‘Jim started getting jumpy when the Commander directed him to Chance’s company for a courier. Thought there was something funny going on. Although he couldn’t quite see what. He suspected the Commander was conniving with his old dining-club mates in Intelligence, carving up the home turf, trying to ease Jim out of the frame because he was being difficult. But I’m sure he was wrong on that score. I always thought the Commander was too close to Jim to do him in. Used to piss me off, the Commander. Wanted to use the roughs and toughs, the street-wise cops, but he couldn’t stomach our uneducated ways. But he loved Jim. Jim was a bit more cultured than the rest of us. Liked reading books. Understood Latin. The Commander and Jim were a team. The Commander wouldn’t have turned on his right-hand man.’

  Harry licked his thumb, rubbed a scratch on his leather jacket. ‘Anyway, I know Jim was wrong about the Commander. He wasn’t siding with Intelligence.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Jim asked me to find out whether the Commander was communicating with his old mates in Intelligence behind his back. Operation Asgard.’

  Of course. Now Jim’s edginess about Operation Asgard made sense.

  ‘So Operation Asgard was Jim’s attempt to find out what the Commander was doing,’ Sam said. ‘Not the Commander’s operation to retrieve the information about Intelligence.’

  He nodded. ‘Operation Asgard. Jim and me, just like old times. Jim asked me to listen to the wires.’

  ‘What wires?’

  ‘The wires between the Embassy and Moscow. If the Commander was communicating with Intelligence, then the Russians would have found out about it and the Embassy would be passing the information back to their bosses in Moscow. And then I would have found out about it. But there wasn’t anything. No noise. Nothing.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. Nothing. As far as I could make out from what was being reported back to Moscow, the only thing the Commander seemed to be concerned about was his pension pot. He was rabbiting on about it constantly.’

  She fiddled with her bottom lip.

  ‘Now that, in fact, was something that was getting a lot of interest from the third secretary,’ Harry said. ‘He wanted to find out all about that. The Commander’s extra-curricular activity – private companies, business deals, the details of his latest wheeze.’

  ‘What sort of wheeze is that then?’

  ‘Oh, it’s some sort of accountant’s dodge; something to do with some new regulation changes. A loophole that meant he could avoid paying tax on his profits. Something about using someone who lives on some island or other to be a director of this company he helped set up.’

  ‘Prosperity Asset Management,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right.’ Harry sounded slightly taken aback. ‘That’s the name of the Commander’s company. How did you work that one out?’

  She dug in her pocket, produced Ventura’s brochure, pointed to the nearly invisible words on the back. ‘Ventura is a subsidiary of Prosperity Asset Management.’

  He held the brochure at arm’s length, brought it up close to his eyes, moved it away again. ‘Prosperity Asset Management. Security solutions. Domestic and international environments. Strategic focus on energy markets. Sounds like a load of old cobblers to me. What does it all mean then?’

  ‘In Prosperity’s case, I reckon it boils down to managing a bunch of dodgy companies that supply odd-jobbers to do dirty work for Intelligence and security guards to take a cut from illegal uranium mining in Zaire,’ she said. ‘Don Chance covers the groundwork through Ventura and Shaba Security. The Commander keeps his eye on the books through Prosperity.’

  Harry’s mouth drooped. The realization that he’d missed a trick, misread the signs, weighing his face down. ‘So the Commander wasn’t talking to his old mates in Intelligence,’ he said. ‘He didn’t have to deal with the spooks because Chance was busy cutting the deals with them. The Commander just did the paperwork. Identified the gaps in the market, calculated the profit.’

  She nodded.

  He shook his head. ‘The Commander was in it for the money all along then.’

  ‘I reckon so.’

  ‘Well, it will be interesting to see how they manage to cover all that lot up,’ Harry said. ‘Won’t want the details of the Commander’s activities spread all over the papers. That’s for sure.’

  He puffed his cheeks, blew a stream of air upward. ‘Glad that’s not my problem.’ He stuck his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders. ‘You’re quite good at all this stuff. You must have learned it all from Jim. Picked up some of his tradecraft.’

  ‘I started young. I’ve had a long apprenticeship.’

  Ars longa, vita brevis.

  ‘Ever thought about joining the Force yourself?’

  ‘No way. I’m too short,’ she added when she realized her reaction sounded rude.

  ‘You should be proud of your dad,’ Harry replied. A little huffily. ‘Last of a breed. Tough old bastard. Smart. But not out for himself. Prepared to make the sacrifices. Put his life on the line. And what’s more,’ he said, ‘he was incorruptible.’

  ‘Do you really think he never did anything wrong?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I said he was incorruptible. He was always doing things wrong, breaking the rules, but only because he was certain he was right. He never did anything because someone had offered him a backhander. He didn’t care about money. Or promotion. In my book he was incorruptible.’

  She winced, not quite sure how to respond, wondering about the certainty of Harry’s judgement. She pictured Jim’s smooth, unlined face gazing at her from the morgue table. She brushed her eye with her finger.

  Charlie’s whistle sounded faintly in the distance. Harry jolted, pulled himself together, waved the manila envelope in the air. ‘Well, I’d better dispose of this lot then.’

  ‘What are you going to do with the information? Do you think Jim might have been intending to leak it to the papers?’

  ‘I’d be surprised.’ He paused. ‘Jim never had much time for journalists.’

  ‘You’re right. I suspect he wasn’t too convinced by the power of whistleblowing.’

  ‘And anyway, these scraps of paper, the information from his contact, it’s not exactly irrefutable evidence of anything. Plausible deniability. Intelligence is pretty good at that.’

  He batted his chin with the envelope, the doodled feather wafting to and fro. She followed the quill with her eyes, traced a line in her mind from the feather’s tip to the tunnel wall.

  ‘Is there a loose tile somewhere along here with a hole behind it?’

  Harry nodded his head slowly. ‘Now there’s a thought,’ he said. ‘That might do the trick. I could leave it in the drop-box so it gets picked up and taken to the Russian Embassy. The analysts will pore over it, put two and two together without much difficulty, run the leads to ground and report their findings back to Moscow on the wires. And that way Intelligence will find out that the Russians know what they are up to, because they will be liste
ning in. And if Intelligence know, that the other side know, then that will make them back off. It’s not totally foolproof, but it’s more likely to do the trick than some half-baked insinuations in a lefty newspaper.’

  She remembered, then, Jim laughing that night in Nethergate when he mentioned the Russians and their poison-tipped umbrellas. Always three steps ahead.

  ‘You know I have a funny feeling Jim was intending to leave the information here all along,’ she said.

  Harry winked. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me.’

  She rubbed her forehead; she had the beginnings of a headache.

  ‘But what about Chance and his international security business? Ventura Enterprises? Shaba Security? What can we do about that?’

  Harry folded his arms. ‘Not a lot. Take more than an envelope of dodgy papers to stop somebody like Chance, I’m afraid. His type are always pretty good at getaways. Best to concentrate on the things you can do something about.’

  Harry flicked his wrist, checked his watch. ‘I’d better shoot off and start the information moving. Have to pick up the third secretary. He’s been at some meeting in the city. In fact he’s not stopped having meetings in the city since he found out about the Commander’s tax dodge. The genie is out of the bottle on that one I reckon. I need to encourage him to concentrate on the day job, persuade him to empty his drop-box. Times are changing. The spooks aren’t as single-minded as they used to be, they’re all looking for sidelines.’

  ‘Really? That’s interesting. Maybe it’s a case of every regime producing its own gravediggers.’

  He gave her a baffled look. ‘Marx. Communist Manifesto. I could lend you Jim’s copy if you like.’

  ‘Thanks. But revolutionary literature isn’t really my department.’

  ‘So what is your department these days?’

  Perhaps he didn’t hear her. He turned to leave. ‘Call me if you need me. You’ve got my number.’

  She nodded. ‘Do svidaniya.’

  ‘Do svidaniya.’ He waved and strode off towards the Isle of Dogs. Halfway along the tunnel he stopped, reached up to the wall, dislodged a tile, dropped the envelope behind, pushed it back. Déjà vu. And for a moment she was slipping, drifting again, being pulled down by the undertow. She was brought back to her senses by a damp blast of wind barrelling down the tunnel from the north, chilling her skin as it passed, rustling the dry leaves, the crisp packets, the fag butts, the scraps of newspaper that had been trapped underground.

  ‘Harry,’ she shouted. ‘Hang on a minute. I have to ask you something.’

  She ran after him. ‘Was Jim’s codename Munin?’

  He smiled, stared along the tunnel, reminiscing for a moment before he spoke. ‘Munin was the codename Jim used when we were at the docks. We were always mucking about with those walkie-talkies, inventing codenames for people. And pubs. Hugin and Munin started off as one of Jim’s jokes. He said they were ravens. Something to do with the Vikings. He liked the foreignness of the names. Said it would throw people of the scent. Tilbury’s ravens. That’s what we were. Birds of the hinterland. Shape-shifters, Jim said. Smart-arses. A raven can see the lie of the land. Fly away from trouble. More room for manoeuvre than being a god, he reckoned. He said, leave the playing God to the Commander.’

  ‘Odin,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right. Odin was our codename for the Commander.’

  Of course.

  ‘Where did Jim find the names anyway?’

  ‘Now, where did he dig those names up from?’ Harry’s forehead furrowed. ‘Oh, I remember now. I caught him reading a kid’s book of Norse myths in the office once.’

  Her jaw dropped. ‘A kid’s book of Norse myths? He must have nicked that from me. I thought I had lost that.’

  Harry grinned. ‘He was always picking up books – history, myths, detective stories, anything. Always had something on the go. So, well, now you know. That’s where Hugin and Munin come from: your book of Norse myths. Probably where Asgard came from as well.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Almost inevitably.’

  Harry turned and she watched him marching on again, disappearing into the strange white light of the tunnel. All she could hear now was the Thames gushing past above her head. And, for some reason, she found the rush of the water soothing.

  She caught the train back to Waterloo, headed out of the station and descended to the embankment path. Heading west. The night lights of Parliament danced on the oily surface of the water. Big Ben’s full moon face shining in the jaundiced urban sky. Once or twice she glanced over her shoulder to check for shadows, but she was definitely on her own now. She passed the flinty walls of Lambeth Palace, the gaudy penthouse heights of Alembic House, and reached the derelict wastelands of Vauxhall. She paused at the point where the Effra escaped its underground sewer and flowed out to greet the Thames. Bit of a hot spot, she heard Jim say. Gateway to the other side. She turned north, up the slope and sauntered slowly across Vauxhall Bridge, stopped at the midpoint, leaned over the grimy railings, breathed in the view: Battersea Power Station, the Cold Store, Lambeth Palace, St Paul’s, Greenwich and, in the far distance, Gravesend. Tilbury. The black streak of a cormorant shot downstream, late-night fishing. Was it really only two weeks since she had driven north over the river with Jim? It felt like another lifetime. Once upon a time. A long time ago. She dug her hand into her overcoat pocket and found the raven’s feather, held it up, the barbs glistening under the hazy street lights, twizzled it between her fingers before casting it over the railing. The black blade floated down to the eddying waters of the Thames and was caught up in the outward flowing tide and swept along with the river as it headed east, past Tilbury and out towards the sea.

  23

  A skein of geese drew a line above the far horizon, flying east along the path of the river. The spires and cupolas of Oxford clustered behind her, the pale stone façades darkening to dusky emerald in the fading evening light. She licked the Rizla papers carefully, joined them in a fan, flicked the Zippo, burned the excess paper back to its seam, heated and sprinkled her gold resin, rolled the spliff perfectly. She tipped back against the chimney stack, lit the reefer, puffed and gazed at the first falling leaves of autumn, swirling in the crystal air. The harvest moon was rising behind the tower now, casting a golden path across the grey quad that bottomed out way below. Tom crawled forward on his hands and knees, dangerously close to the roof edge, and peered over.

  ‘Careful,’ she said. ‘You might fall.’

  He grinned at her over his shoulder. ‘I didn’t know you cared,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t. It’s just that I’ll get sent down if we are caught on the roof.’

  Death, she thought, came in threes. And there had been two deaths already that summer. First Jim and then the dog, who had keeled over, collapsed, been rushed to the vet and passed away on the operating table the week after Sam had left for college. It was, Sam had noted at the time, quite convenient that the dog had died shortly before Liz and Roger were due to set off for Greece on their two-week holiday. One man and his dog: two deaths. She eyed Tom retreating from the sheer drop and had a sudden flashback to the Watcher’s assassination, the fleeting glimpse of oblivion in his eyes, and reminded herself that, of course, there had been more than two deaths that summer. She hadn’t thought about Waterloo for weeks. She must have blanked it from her memory. Funny how she managed to do that so easily. She wasn’t the only person who had wiped away the details. According to the report she had found hidden in the back pages of The Times, there were no witnesses: two bullets, two bodies, one unidentified, the other an off-duty senior police officer on the point of retirement. Nothing to do with his job, of course. The Superintendent in charge of the case had stated that they were working on the theory that it was a failed street-robbery attempt. Although they had no leads apart from an abandoned XT500 black Yamaha with false number plates which they had been able to trace – via its engine serial number – to its original owner in Durban, from whom i
t had been stolen the previous year. Sam did a quick body re-count. Two well-dodgy stiffs at Waterloo and Jim’s uncorrupted corpse found at the Vauxhall end of the Effra. And the dog. So there had been four deaths that summer.

  There was nothing like a death, she mused, to make you realize the pointlessness of bearing grudges. She had made up her mind to call Tom on her way back from Waterloo that night, after she had watched the raven’s feather drift away and had decided that life was just too short to waste time being petty. She would be magnanimous. Take people at their word. Face value. She had dug out Tom’s phone number. Stared at it as she had rerun events in Orkney, remembered catching him red-handed rummaging in Jim’s bedroom, decided he was a total tosser after all and her original decision never to speak to him again had been the right one. So she hadn’t phoned. Had dodged his calls. And then the week after she had arrived at college, when she was feeling depressed and lonely and was wondering how on earth she had managed to end up in a place where ninety-five per cent of her fellow students were public school boys, she had found a letter from Tom in her pigeonhole and it had cheered her up. She had called him and he had said he would come down to visit her in Oxford.

  ‘Who are those blokes in the funny penguin suits?’ he asked.

  She squinted at the gathering flock of black-swathed figures. ‘Might be the Bullingdon. Might be the Assassins.’

  He raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  ‘Dining clubs,’ she said.

  ‘What’s a dining club?’

  ‘It’s a sort of secular secret society.’ She groped for a better explanation. ‘Junior freemasons. A trade union for toffs.’

  ‘Are there a lot of toffs here then?’

  ‘Yes. I somehow seem to have ended up in the worst college for that. They only started admitting women a couple of years ago and they haven’t exactly embraced us with open arms.’ She shrugged. ‘Apparently this college has produced more prime ministers than all the other colleges combined.’

  He took an Instamatic camera out of his anorak pocket, aimed it down into the quad and snapped, the flash briefly lighting up the night sky.